“Really, sir, you are rather hard on me,” he said. “After not seeing you for eight years, this is scarcely the greeting I anticipated from you. You have called me an unhappy man. Granting that I am one, am I any exception to the ordinary run of my fellow mortals? Show me the man who is really happy—who has no skeleton locked up in the secret closet of his heart!” “Kester St. George, what have you done with your cousin, Lionel Dering?” Kester started to his feet, his eyes staring, his hands trembling. A spasm that was gone almost before it had come, contorted his face for a moment strangely. “Before heaven, General St. George, I don’t know what you are driving at!” he cried, in tones that were husky from excitement. “I am not my cousin’s keeper, that you should ask me what I have done with him.” “Then it was not you who assisted him to escape from prison?” “I! No—certainly not.” “And yet I said it could be no one but you,” said the General, half sadly. “And you don’t know what has become of him? You cannot tell me where to find him now?” “I have no more knowledge of my cousin’s whereabouts than you have, sir.” “How I have been mistaken! When I read the account of Lionel’s extraordinary escape, I said to myself, ‘This is Kester’s doing. Kester knew that his cousin was innocent, and it is he who has helped him to escape.’” “You honoured me in your thoughts far more highly than I deserved. I stated all along my belief in my cousin’s innocence, but I had certainly no hand in planning his escape.” “But, at all events, you saw him frequently while he was in prison? You were there as his friend, helper, and adviser? How did he bear his imprisonment? Did he speak of me?” Again Kester’s colour came and went. “I never saw my cousin while he was in prison,” he said, in a low voice. “I was suffering severely from illness during the whole time. I was confined to my own rooms, and forbidden to stir out of doors on any account.” “You were well enough, sir, to find your way to your club within a week of the date of your cousin’s trial. You were not too ill to play whist with Colonel Lexington, and win fifty guineas from that gentleman by betting on the odd trick. You were not afraid of walking home afterwards through the cold streets with a cigar in your mouth.” All this had been told General St. George by Colonel Lexington himself—an old military friend, who had called upon him two or three days previously. Kester St. George glared at his uncle as if he would gladly have annihilated him. But the old soldier gave him back look for look, and the younger man’s eyes quickly fell. With a muttered curse, he pushed aside his chair, and strode to the window. Then he turned.